SpaceX filed its public S-1 with the SEC, revealing 2025 revenue of $18.7 billion — up 33% year over year — anchored by Starlink's $11.4 billion connectivity segment. The Goldman-led syndicate is targeting a $1.75 to $2 trillion valuation, more than double the December 2025 tender offer mark, with a Nasdaq debut under SPCX as early as June. If it prices at range, it will be the largest IPO in history. Cerebras just had one of the biggest tech IPO debuts in years. The AI chip company listed at $185, opened at $350, and closed up 68% at $311 — giving it a roughly $95 billion valuation and making it the largest U.S. tech IPO since Uber. The AI hardware window is officially open, and the market is now treating non-NVIDIA AI infrastructure as a real public-market category. Cisco shocked the market with a major AI infrastructure guide. Revenue hit $15.84 billion, AI infrastructure orders were lifted from $5 billion to $9 billion for fiscal 2026, and the stock jumped 15%. The same day, Cisco cut 4,000 jobs to fund the pivot. The AI capex boom is no longer just NVIDIA — it is spreading into networking, optics, security, and the second layer of the infrastructure stack. The Trump-Xi Beijing summit ended without a formal AI deal. The U.S. cleared major Chinese companies including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, JD, and Lenovo to buy up to 75,000 NVIDIA H200 chips each, but Beijing paused the orders almost immediately. AI infrastructure is no longer just a company-level decision — it is now a geopolitical bargaining chip. Google disclosed the first confirmed AI-built zero-day exploit used in the wild. The attack targeted a two-factor authentication flow in a widely used open-source system administration tool, and Google says the planned mass exploitation event was stopped before it scaled. The cybersecurity impact of AI is no longer theoretical — AI is now accelerating both offense and defense. Inflation came in hot again. April CPI rose 0.6% month over month, the Fed held rates at 3.50-3.75%, and markets are now pricing a higher chance of a rate hike than a cut. And yet the S&P 500 still closed above 7,500, while the Nasdaq and Dow also hit major levels. The AI trade is overpowering the macro signal — for now. Runner-up: Anthropic and the Gates Foundation signed a $200 million four-year partnership directing grants, Claude credits, and engineering support toward global health, K-12 tutoring, and smallholder-farm agronomy. The deal lands the same week Anthropic absorbed Colossus 1 and signed Google for $200 billion in TPUs. The model lab is becoming an infrastructure-scale institution. Runner-up: VoltaGrid raised $1 billion from Blackstone and Halliburton at a $10 billion-plus valuation to build behind-the-meter power systems for AI data centers. Power, not just chips, is becoming one of the biggest constraints in the AI boom. Runner-up: Amazon is reportedly preparing another 14,000 corporate layoffs, which would bring 2026 reductions to roughly 30,000 jobs if confirmed. The AI labor reduction cycle is widening across Big Tech. Runner-up: A former Google engineer was convicted of stealing TPU trade secrets after transferring more than 500 confidential files tied to Google's AI chip architecture and software stack. It is one of the clearest legal templates yet for AI-era intellectual property enforcement. If you want a prize, send us a DM:instagram.com/rickerandbontiktok.com/@rickerandbonyoutube.com/@rickerandbon
